China has promulgated six laws on environmental protection, 13 laws on natural resources administration and 34 relevant statutes. Environmental protection departments have worked out more than 90 nationwide rules and 1,020 local ones on environmental protection. These have formed an initial legal system on environmental protection in accordance with the requirements of market economy.
In order to strengthen the environmental protection and mete out severe punishment to those activities damaging environment or relaxing supervision on environmental protection, the newly revised criminal law especially added two accusations, namely crime of ravaging environmental resource protection and crime of misconduct in supervision of environmental protection.
In addition, the making of standards and technical norms involving ecological protection is in process, while environment-marked products and environmental administration system have had relevant standards. Up to now, China has worked out the policy of technology for preventing pollutions discharged by key industries, and formulated and revised 53 coordinated standards such as that for the discharge of pollutants by key industries, control of pollutants released by motor vehicles, and disposal of perilous wastes. Four state environmental quality standards with 430 coordinated state environmental standards have been completed.
With an increasingly improving legal system, law enforcement regarding environmental protection has been strengthened greatly. People’s Congresses and People’s Political Consultative Conferences at varied-levels have brought top priority to the inspection of law enforcement involving environmental protection, effectively supervising governments of varied levels enforcing the environmental protection laws.
The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and related supervision departments have inspected the implementation of the “Decision by the State Council on Certain Problems of Environmental Protection” in local areas successively in the past four years. Small-scale enterprises engaged in 15 kinds of industries such as electroplating, leather making, printing and dyeing, and so on, which discharge large amount of pollutants, have been shut down. Other massive activities of law enforcement, such as checking on the works of pollution prevention in key river valleys and areas, have also been carried out.
In 2000 alone, environmental protection-related law enforcement agencies conducted in-spot inspections for more than 1,620,000 times, strongly pushing forward China’s legalization of environmental protection.
(china.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, September 28, 2002)
